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Google shows off phone that translates text in photos
The Associated Press
Date: Tuesday Feb. 16, 2010 4:03 PM ET
BARCELONA, Spain Stumped by foreign languages when you're traveling? Google Inc. is working on software that translates text captured by a phone camera.
At a demonstration Tuesday at Mobile World Congress, a cell phone trade show in Barcelona, an engineer shot a picture of a German dinner menu with a phone running Google Inc.'s Android software. An application on the phone sent the shot to Google's servers, which sent a translation back to the phone.
It translated "Fruhlingssalat mit Wildkrautern" as "Spring salad with wild herbs."
There was no word on when the software would be available.
Software that translates text from pictures is already available for some phones, but generally does the processing on the phone. By sending the image to its servers for processing, Google can apply a lot more computing power, for faster, more accurate results. The phone still won't order for you, though — you'll have to point at the menu.
The demonstration was part of Google CEO Eric Schmidt's keynote speech at the trade show, the largest for the wireless industry. He said phone applications that take advantage of "cloud computing" — servers accessible through the wireless network — will bring powerful changes to the industry.
Schmidt's speech also featured a demonstration of videos and a game running on an Android phone using Flash, a format that's ubiquitous on Web pages intended for PCs, but hasn't worked on many phones, including the iPhone. Support for Flash in Android and a few other smart phone operating systems is expected later this year.
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I think he was pushed to take matters into his own hands. I have a teenage son and if he was involved with a drug dealer I would be furious and try anything to save him like this father did for his daughter. Why do police often say they can't do anything until it's too late? Whether it be a drug dealer or an abusive spouse, the police can't seem to do anything until something really bad happens. In this case they could have raided the drug dealers home and arrested him. The whole town knew what was going on in that house but yet the police chose to do nothing. Release this man and give him a medal for doing the right thing by his daughter. I can't wait to see the episode on W5, I will certainly be watching this one.
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